Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Automobility, or the material, spatial, economic and cultural dominance of the automobile and its spaces, has been the hegemonic regime of mobility throughout much of West, and increasingly, the globe, for many decades. Through the process of automobilization, cities and societies throughout the West have been socially and physically restructured to allow for mass automobility. Concomitant with mass motorization, cities have experimented to varying degrees with a number of purported alternatives to the private car, by, for instance, building urban rail networks, especially in major cities, and otherwise through the provision of buses. Drawing on examples from Germany and the United States, we argue in this contribution that despite its appearance, public transport as we know it is not a serious alternative to automobility, but rather a core part of an underlying logic, wherein such “alternatives” to the car are in fact to guarantee that automobility remains functional. Much like automotive insurance, traffic education, and the physical separation of traffic modes, public transport is a further significant component of the maintenance of the hegemonic system of automobility because it serves to mitigate particular antagonisms of automobility that would otherwise threaten the system’s reproduction. We conclude that a true alternative cannot be accomplished through current efforts, which, at best, moderately expand public transport, but would instead require a complete restructuring of the automobile-based socio-spatial order.